“Have you finished your polish of the Wiz’s speech?” she asked. “Hmm, good salad. I like the bits of walnuts and blue cheese.”

“It’s all done,” he replied with a sigh. “Another masterpiece. Simon will be quoted for weeks afterward.” He grinned. “I shall live vicariously through him, his words my own.”

“Yes, well, I don’t know how much of this vicarious-living business you want to indulge in,” she mused, lifting her wineglass and studying it speculatively. “He seemed pretty on edge after Andrew Wren’s visit.”

Ross looked up from his salad. “Really? What was that all about anyway, did you ever find out?”

She shook her head. “But it’s never good news for a public figure when an investigative reporter comes calling.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Jenny told me Simon asked for the books cataloguing donations and expenditures to be brought up for Wren to look at. What does that suggest to you?”

“Financial impropriety.” Ross shrugged. “Wren will hunt a long time before he’ll find evidence of that. Simon’s a fanatic about keeping clean books. He can account for every penny received or spent.”

He went back to eating his salad. Stef continued to study her wineglass, finally taking a sip from it. “I just don’t like the way Simon is behaving,” she said finally. “He isn’t himself lately. Something is bothering him.”

Ross finished chewing, kept his eyes lowered, then forced himself to look up at her and smile. “Something is bothering almost everyone, Stef. The thing to remember is, mostly we have to work these things out by ourselves.”

John Ross dreams. It is the same dream, the only dream he has anymore that he can remember upon waking. It is a dream of the future he was sworn to prevent as a Knight of the Word, and each time it reoccurs it is a little darker than it was before.

This time is no exception.

He stands on a hillside south of Seattle, watching as the city burns. Hordes of once-men and demons pour through gaps in the shattered defenses and drive the defenders steadily back toward the water that hems them in on all sides but his. Feeders cavort through the carnage and drink in the terror and frenzy and rage of the dying and wounded. It is a nightmarish scene, the whole of the scorched and burning landscape awash in rain and mist, darkened by clouds and gloom, wrapped in a madness that finds voice in the screams and cries of the humans it consumes.

But the feelings that fill Ross are unfamiliar ones. They are not of frustration or anger, not of despair or sadness, as they have been each time before. His feelings now are dull and empty, devoid of anything but irritation and a faint boredom. He stands with a group of the city’s survivors, but he has no regard for them either. Rather, he is a shell, armored and invulnerable, but emotionless. He has no idea how he became this way, but it is a transcending experience to realize it has happened. He is no longer a Knight of the Word; he is something else entirely. The humans he stands with are not a part of him. They do not meet his gaze as he looks over at them speculatively. They cower in his presence and huddle submissively before him. They are frightened of him. They are terrified.